Primary Rhinoplasty Review with Kowon > Real Review

I'm going to break up my review and experience in several parts to help anyone else looking at this to use the research I had used and hopefully build upon it when they go through their own surgery.

1. What brought me to this surgery

2. Consultations

3. Experience

4. Final thoughts and updates

5. What I would/could have changed

What Brought me to this surgery?

What brought me to get rhinoplasty was I felt really bad looking at pictures of myself especially when I was smiling because I had a bulbous nose and my bridge was hardly visible in some lights. I felt like my nose made my face look shorter than it was and made it difficult to use certain fashion styles because of my face. I also had a snoring issue that going into this, I did not know if it could be fixed with a nosejob. I did know about nosejobs before, but I did not know about the extent to how common it was so that’s what brought me to look into it. Since early 2023 I had looked a little bit into Korean plastic surgery and eventually came across this forum. But, it wasn’t until around September 2023 where life circumstances lead me to be able to take this trip in favorable conditions that I had truly done my research on clinics and began to plan my trip.

So I came into this with the main objectives of:

In the 3+ months leading up to booking my flights, I used Notion to write notes from every review I could find on each clinic that did rhinoplasty. My method consisted mainly of checking if the clinic had any botched or substantially negative reviews, if it did, I would mark them off and not risk going with that clinic. I found clinics using purseforum reviews and then later checked Sungyesa and Gangnam Unni for general reviews by locals (I didn’t look too hard into each review here because it was difficult to navigate as a non-korean speaking foreigner).

Consultations

In the order of my consultations over 2 days: 3 on the first day and 1 on the next, this section will go over how those went. With my consultations I had hired a translator (Ryan KKT: Ryankim13) for a couple of reasons: to bounce ideas off of and help catch any flaws in the consultations I might have missed, help with post-care, and have a translator who I know understands my needs fully because I don’t know the quality of each clinic’s in house translator. I won’t go over the prices in detail because of an agreement for this review with Kowon, but also because the price of the surgery was lower down in my objectives, as I was mostly concerned with the quality of the nosejob itself. For each consultation, I prepared reference photos about what I wanted, and then also took B/As from each doctor themselves to drill in cases that they’re familiar with.

This consultation was the next day after I had a nights rest and got to think through the other consultations. But, it started off the same with CT scan, speaking with the consultant (Juyeon) and then going to see the doctor. Dr. Kim basically was the best of all worlds for me, he listened very intently and tried understand my wants, then responded by explaining the procedure he would do to fix that. he took pictures of my face and live photoshopped (which he’s quite good at) what he expects he would be able to achieve. He also took measurements to essentially have a hypothetical surgery right there to say how much he would have to reduce my alars to get the desired look which none of the other clinics did. He also said that the septal deviation correction wouldn’t fix the snoring issue, but he will have to do it anyways. He recommended to do alar reduction, bulbous tip reduction using septal cartilage, then he measured the cartilage using the CT scan and said it SHOULD be enough for the tip, but he kept the idea of using ear cartilage as well from my right ear. Then he said he would use silicone for my bridge after osteotomy to remove my hump. At the end, he gave a final result photoshopped photo of each angle and mentioned that he would try to get as close as possible to this, but my reference photos aren’t going to be exactly the same. Which was good, because I know there are limitations, and I’m glad the Doctor I would go with also understands that. Then after the consultation, we talked with the consultant (Juyeon) again and got my quote. After some negotiation, I got a discount for writing this review, as well as giving updates to it later on (1 month, etc.). This act itself was a green flag to me because it seemed like they were confident I would be happy enough at 1 month to also put on the line a discount for my satisfaction. Juyeon also was very responsive to anything I asked through KKT to her, so that impressed me as well. Juyeon also already kept my surgery date open tentatively and gave me until the next day to decide if I wanted to go through with it, which also impressed me because they were thinking ahead to make sure I get my surgery before I left, which some of the other clinics seemed to just have as an afterthought. So overall, my experience with Kowon was the best with their doctor and consultant.

After a day of thinking my options, I messaged Ryan in the morning and told him I would go with Kowon because I thought that they were overall the best choice for me. I then had to go in to the clinic to give a 10% deposit in the morning. When I went in, it seemed like there were a lot of locals there as well, which was another green flag to me, because its not a clinic that only churns out foreigners.

As I'm writing this, I'm currently 1.5 weeks post-operation, so I will soon write an update on the experience of the surgery and healing. Then, soon after that, I will write the first update on my thoughts of my nose now.